Hands-on Sonic & The Black Knight

Sonic & The Black Knight, the latest hedgehog game from SEGA and developer Sonic Team (Japan), is the next in the franchise's storybook theme, the first of which was the Arabian-style Sonic and the Secret Rings. This time director Tetsu Katano (lead programmer, Sonic Adventure games and Sonic Heroes) takes the blue blazer into the time of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable, where he gains a magical sword and must work his way through a series of areas, both saving villagers and collecting rings, so that he might finally do battle with the king himself, who has become corrupted with power. A magician pulls Sonic into the era through a time warp and charges him with the task of saving the land -- a challenge he begrudgingly accepts as he wolfs down chili-dogs in a nicely produced cinematic that opens the storyline.

We've spent a few hours with Black Knight so far and the game seems to share more in common with Sonic Unleashed than it does with its storybook-themed predecessor, Secret Rings. This is primarily true because you control the hedgehog as you do in Unleashed, utilizing the nunchuk's analog stick to strafe him left and right as he soars through on-track environments. You'll have the freedom to slow down and jump backward if you pass by and object or enemy of interest, but the camera will not turn around, and thus the title oftentimes feels like an action racer. This straightforward, linear design allows the developer to keep Sonic mostly glued to a set path so that it can predict actions and supply players with a more cinematic presentation, which it has done with Black Knight. Sonic fans can once more look forward to some lightning fast, unpredictable track designs filed with rail slides, wall jumps and more. That being true, we have yet to encounter any trademark loop-de-loops or corkscrews.

The game's graphics look great.

As always, the developer has shied away from a purely traditional Sonic game and introduced a new gimmick -- in this case, the mascot's trusty sword. Whereas the daylight stages in Unleashed emphasized fantastic level constructions and pure-adrenaline speed, a harkening back to classic Sonic design, Black Knight is much heavier on character combat. Sonic regularly encounters evil guards and knights as he runs about environments, at which point the action will stall until he fights them off. You'll be able to strafe ever so slightly left and right with the nunchuk, erect a temporary frontal shield by holding Z button, jump and dive forward by pressing A button twice, or flip backward by holding back on the analog stick and pressing the same button. You can also jump into the air and waggle with the Wii remote to execute a sword spin attack.

Don't want to jump on those.

Attacks are handled entirely with lots of Wii shakes and waggle. The game does not differentiate between horizontal and vertical swipes so you're free to shake aimlessly as you battle enemies. You can quickly string together multi-combo hits if you waggle incessantly. Combat seems to work passably, although we've noticed on several occasions that we're better off gesturing early as we soar toward enemies in order to cue the attacks as we come blazing upon them -- otherwise, they might attack first. Our favorite new fight mechanic. Gone are the traditional mid-air enemy lock-on attacks. Instead, the developer has engineered a new, highly cinematic lock-on system tied to the B-trigger. Press it and the action will slow into bullet-time, the camera will pan closer to Sonic, and a red reticule will appear around the nearest enemy. Gesture with the Wii remote and Sonic will zip toward them, sword drawn, and take them out, at which point the reticule will auto-lock on the next foe. This is how you execute multi-enemy attacks, but you'll need to be mindful of an on-screen meter that determines just how much time you can spend in the mode because when it runs out, you'll be back to regular waggle attacks and no more lock-on.